“They Live” Source Material Getting a Remake, But Don’t Call It That

Ray Nelson is a writer who claims to have invented the propeller beanie while in the 10th grade, gave LSD to Philip K. Dick twice, and smuggled banned Henry Miller books out of France during the 1950s. In other words, he’s fun at parties. He also wrote the 1963 short story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” (full text at link). Universal later bought the story and adapted it for John Carpenter’s They Live (1988). Now Universal is making another movie based on the story, but don’t call it a remake or a reboot. They’re calling these “a return to the source material” now. All the cool kids are doing it, which is why they’ve tapped Matt Reeves (Let Me In, Cloverfield) to handle the remake totally new hotness:

“I saw an opportunity to do a movie that was very point-of-view driven, a psychological science fiction thriller that explores this guy’s nightmare,” [Matt] Reeves told me. “There could be a desperate love story at the center of this. Carpenter took a satirical view of the material and the larger political implication that we’re being controlled. I am very drawn to the emotional side, the nightmare experience with the paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or a Roman Polanski-style film.” [Deadline]

A desperate love story at the center, huh? You mean like the one in the source material, where George Nada slaps his girlfriend, ties her up, and steals her car? So romantic. I’d rather watch six minute alleyway brawls or run out of bubblegum: